Schuiten op het IJ

Schuiten op het IJ — Barges on the IJ — painted around 1901, shows the broad waterway separating Amsterdam from the North Holland countryside, a body of water at the heart of the city's identity and commerce. The IJ was the entry point for sea-going traffic from the Zuiderzee and had been the site of Amsterdam's maritime greatness since the seventeenth century. By 1900, steam vessels were changing the character of the harbor, but the traditional flat-bottomed barges persisted alongside them. Witsen documents this transitional moment without nostalgia, accepting the working reality of the harbor as his subject.

The wide expanse of the IJ gives Witsen an opportunity for panoramic horizontal composition, the barges providing scale against the vast water and sky. His handling of the reflective surface of the IJ is among his most accomplished water painting, the broken reflections of hull and sky captured with assured directional brushwork.